What Is Property? · Chapter
Seventh Proposition explained
Proudhon argues that property is impossible because its consumption, hoarding, or use as capital ultimately destroys its own foundation.
What happens
Proudhon argues that property is impossible because its consumption, hoarding, or use as capital ultimately destroys its own foundation. Consumption without reproduction depletes wealth, hoarding nullifies it, and capitalizing turns it against production by reducing wages and the source of income. He illustrates this with the example of a proprietor who capitalizes income, leading to an inevitable increase in taxes and the budget, which he ties to the impossibility of property's sustainability.
Themes in this chapter
Property as Theft
Proudhon argues that property consumption without reproduction is theft, as it relies on others' production.
Labor and Exploitation
The proprietor is depicted as a non-producing machine that exploits labor, consuming without reproducing.
Inequality of Wealth
The chapter highlights how property leads to luxury and poverty, with the proprietor's consumption harming society.
Critique of Law and Government
Proudhon criticizes government borrowing and taxation as a form of capitalization that perpetuates property and inequality.
Characters to notice
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon
Author and central voice; presents the seventh proposition and critiques property through economic reasoning.
Key passages
“The proprietor who consumes his income is a bottomless gulf—sand which we water, a stone which we sow.”
The proprietor's consumption is unproductive and wasteful, like pouring water on sand or sowing stone.
Proudhon uses vivid imagery to illustrate the futility of property consumption.
“No real property without enjoyment; no enjoyment without consumption; no consumption without loss of property—such is the inflexible necessity to which God’s judgment compels the proprietor to bend.”
Property inherently requires consumption for enjoyment, but consumption destroys the property itself, creating an inescapable contradiction.
This encapsulates the core paradox of property that Proudhon explores in the chapter.